


Follow without pride

by Petra



Category: due South
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-03
Updated: 2009-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began with a gunshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow without pride

It began with a gunshot, and someone in the train car behind the one where she stood screamed. Ben didn't look back, just swung himself up and held onto Victoria's hand as though it was the only thing that could keep him safe. They got inside between one breath and the next, both of them grinning like sociopaths.

She squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. "We'll be fine," she said. And she said, "I love you."

He believed both things as hard as he could. He needed something to believe, to fill in that place where "Maintain the Right" wasn't anymore. "I," he said, and swallowed, and said it back to her.

Her smile was sharp, nothing like home and everything like Victoria.

Any second now, she would tell him a poem, her voice melding with the sound of the train on the track, rhythmically tearing him away from everyone he'd ever been.

*

He didn't ask where they were going when they bought their tickets, didn't ask how they would live.

His father didn't say, "The wages of sin are death," and neither did his grandmother, though it was the sort of thing she might have said in that situation, with a sniff and a disapproving frown.

Ben didn't look for either of them, even when he was in some warm country -- he knew where, if he let himself, but he didn't let himself -- and he could imagine his father sweating in full dress uniform. He'd done what he could for his father, and if this -- she -- meant he'd never appear again, so much the better.

Probably.

*

No one in the hotel spoke much English, but with a little French, a little Mandarin, and the phrases the concierge knew, Ben found out that Victoria had left him, jetlagged and more confused than he could remember admitting to being, and gone somewhere. A bank, presumably, and if that meant that they'd have to fly again any time soon, he'd --

He'd sleep on the plane.

She came back an hour later and found him dozing in the heat on top of the sheets, as dizzy from the humidity as anything else. Chicago had been uncomfortable in the summer, but this place was beyond anything he'd learned to tolerate, too hot, too clinging, too sultry.

Her kisses were worse by far, and left him gasping for more of the half-liquid air, clinging to her and not thinking, not at all, about the way she'd smiled when she came in, the easy way she'd peeled off a pair of gloves before she straddled his hips.

*

In another country, she held his wrists against the mattress and sucked him for half an hour, until her lips were swollen and slick and he couldn't keep his hips from jerking at the barest touch. "Hang in there," she said, her voice soft, a dare in every syllable.

Ben knew it was only a game, but his vision had started to narrow and it was distracting. "Please," he said, and his voice sounded unsurprisingly hoarse. "I can't --"

"Of course you can." She kissed his thigh and squeezed his wrists, asking him to pretend that she could keep him there as long as she wanted.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then another, surrendering everything he had left to give. "All right," he said, and heard the triumph in her laugh before she took him in her mouth again and finally, finally let him tip over the edge into pleasure with a shock so strong he felt as though he'd never stop falling. He jerked back into himself with every muscle tense, panting as though he'd been chasing -- a car. He might someday do that again, but he'd never chase another wolf.

*

Ben saw it coming eight months before it happened, back on the train that left Chicago and Canada and sanity behind. Victoria said, "Throw me the bag," and he did.

It wasn't the first gunshot wound he'd ever had, but that didn't make it easier to breathe. When he looked down, he saw the bubbles in his blood between his hand and his chest, and knew that the police -- whatever they were called here -- were only doing their job. That Victoria was only doing what she knew how to do, and that she was going to be safe, doing what she did.

And that he was going to die, not knowing where he was -- Bolivia, he was in Bolivia -- or who he was -- Ben.

Not Benton Fraser, not on any identification he'd carried since that first day, and no one would ever know or care that he was dead except, possibly, Victoria. But he wasn't certain about that.

He wanted, for a moment that became two minutes while someone shouted something in Spanish too fast and elided for him to follow, to apologize to everyone he'd ever met, starting with himself. But he didn't have the words, the energy, or, at last, the breath.


End file.
